Downloading 11.2.0.2 from MoS? Don’t get caught!

Simple post, just to warn the souls that haven’t downloaded 11.2.0.2 patchset yet:

1 – You don’t need the base version 11.2.0.1 anymore, this patchset is selfsufficient

2 – There are 7 files in a total 4.7 Gigs but you don’t have to download them all

So which zip files do you need? Here’s the list :

zip1of7 + zip2of7 => Database (if you’re creating a non-ASM, non-RAC environment this is all you need)

zip3of7 => Grid Infrastructure (only needed for either or both ASM and RAC installations)

zip4of7 => Client

zip5of7 => Gateways

zip6of7 => Examples

zip7of7 => deinstall (uninstalling Oracle software it’s thru a different set of media since 11gR2)

So if you need basic non-rac non-asm upgrade or groud up installation, just download the first 2 zips.

LMC.

Disable Firewall in Oracle VM Templates saves you a lot of trouble

If you’re addicted to use Oracle VM templates like myself and sometimes have networking problems there is one “must-do” task that will save you a lot of trouble: disabling the Linux firewall.

I experienced sshd, EM, scp, you-name-it-kind-of-networking-tool problems until I disabled the firewall inside each and every Oracle Virtual Machine (on a lab OVS server pool, not production).

And how to you acomplish that simple task?

Easy-peasy lemon-squeazy:

1. log on as root

2. # service iptables stop

3. # chkconfig iptables off

If you want to save the config for later use, you can do this command before stoping the service:

# service iptables save

If you’re using IPv6 then the service is called “ip6tables” and the commands are the same.

Hope it helped.

Putting ACFS to work: how to create a mount point in the new Oracle File System

This post is a translation of another one that I’ve originally wrote in portuguese. I’ve decided to share with the international Oracle community through my weblog.

ACFS stands for ASM Cluster File System. ACFS is a new file system created by Oracle that is created on top of an ASM Disk Group. The architecture is very simple and these mount points can contain both general purpose files (except  db files) or Oracle Home binaries, which is very good for sharing binaries.

There are three ways to setup ACFS:

- Web (with Enterprise Manager)

- With  ASMCA (ASM Configuration Assistant) a graphic tool

- or through command line statements

We will show you examples using ASMCA because it’s nicer

Here’s the step-by-step:

1 – We had two 1GB LUNs/Disks for this example with which two raw devices were created:

[oracle@node1 ~]$ cat /etc/rc.local

#!/bin/sh

#

# This script will be executed *after* all the other init scripts.

# You can put your own initialization stuff in here if you don’t

# want to do the full Sys V style init stuff.

touch /var/lock/subsys/local

raw /dev/raw/raw1 /dev/sdb1

raw /dev/raw/raw2 /dev/sdc1

chmod 666 /dev/raw/raw1

chmod 666 /dev/raw/raw2

chown oracle:oinstall /dev/raw/raw1

chown oracle:oinstall /dev/raw/raw2

2 – Now it’s time to call ASMCA:

[oracle@node1 ~]$ . oraenv

ORACLE_SID = [+ASM] ?

ORACLE_HOME = [/home/oracle] ? /u01/11.2.0/grid

The Oracle base for ORACLE_HOME=/u01/11.2.0/grid is /u01/oracle

[oracle@node1 ~]$ asmca &

3 – Create one disk group (DG) with those two raw devices:

4 – We then create a ASM volume on top of this DG, naming it “volumezinho” (we show here several ways of doing so):

There are a few advanced options in ASMCA when you create a volume:

5 – Create a directoy on the ext3 Linux file system so when can mount there the device created by “volumezinho”

[root@node1 ~]# mkdir /u02/oradata/acfs
[root@node1 ~]# chown oracle:oinstall /u02/oradata/acfs

6 – Now let’s create the ACFS mount point. We can choose between one of these two options:

But still you have to mount it manually:

Et voilá!

Now we can go to the directory mounted on the ASM volume formated as ACFS, and create some bogus text file:



[oracle@node1 ~]$ df -m
Filesystem           1M-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00 47551     16389     28708  37% /
/dev/sda1                   99        11        83  12% /boot
tmpfs                     1014       662       352  66% /dev/shm
/dev/sdd1                  512       351       162  69% /u02/oradata/cluster-lmc
/dev/asm/volumezinho-486   512       101       412  20% /u02/oradata/acfs/data_volumezinho

[oracle@node1 ~]$ cd /u02/oradata/acfs/data_volumezinho
[oracle@node1 data_volumezinho]$ ll
total 68
-rw-r--r-- 1 oracle oinstall    89 Sep 24 14:33 ficheiro.txt
drwx------ 2 root   root     65536 Sep 24 14:20 lost+found

[oracle@node1 data_volumezinho]$ cat ficheiro.txt


Primeiro ficheiro de texto criado num volume ASM no qual foi montado um ACFS!!!


Yupii!!


[oracle@node1 data_volumezinho]$



Technology is an amazing thing. So many twists and turns to end up in the same place ...

Need more Swap?

If you’re tight on swap and have 512 MB to spare here’s a simple procedure that might save your skin on the absence of a Linux guru:

1) Create a swapfile on a mount point, say /u02:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/u02/swapfile bs=1M count=512

2) Make it Swap

mkswap /u02/swapfile

3) Add it to the swap pool

swapon /u02/swapfile

4) Make it persistent by editing /etc/fstab and adding the following line:

/u02/swapfile   swap swap   defaults 0   0

5) Check it (now or after booting)

swapon -s

Works fine but it’s considered hammerin’!

Asynchronous I/O On Linux

I’ve recently came across the issue of using Asynchronous I/O  on Linux (RHEL4) and there were some issues I want to share with everyone who reads and searches in this web log.

The Metalink Notes:

Subject:	How To Check if Asynchronous I/O is Working On Linux
	Doc ID:	237299.1	Type:	HOWTO
	Modified Date:	05-JUN-2009	Status:	PUBLISHED

Subject:	Asynchronous I/O (aio) on RedHat Advanced Server 2.1 and RedHat Enterprise Linux 3
	Doc ID:	225751.1	Type:	FAQ
	Modified Date:	07-MAY-2009	Status:	PUBLISHED

The 10g R2 documentation on this:

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/server.102/b15658/appc_linux.htm#BABIIHEJ

This is just what as (very) usefull for me at the time on this matter, which obvisouly doesn’t end here. There’s a lot more to be said about the theme.

Let me just add the million-dollar info of this post: on 10gR2 with RHEL4.6 with EMC Clariion CX4, the parameter filesystemio_options with SETALL made the system hang, and by changing it to ASYNCH made the system work and at a good pace.

One for the books.

LMC.

Manually Editing UDMs without EM

In case you use Oracle 10g in Enterprise Linux 5, you might run into a lot of weird issues. One of those is the inability of Enterprise Manager (EM) to collect host metrics. For EM the HostAvailability is zero percent. This will have a snowball effect on your EM repository.

This is a known bug (Bug 7284070), just because the syntax of the “tail” command has changed. How stupid can these errors be?

The workaround suggested by Oracle is to edit “$ORACLE_HOME/sysman/admin/scripts/allprocs.sh” and substitute the “tail +2″ command with “tail -n +2″.

But wait up! This is not enough! You might want to edit other perl scripts like $ORACLE_HOME/sysman/admin/scripts/osCpuUsage.pl and make the same syntax change in the “tail” command.

But if you haven’t reached this level of “troubleshiting” yet and you just have defined a nice set of User-Defined Metrics (UDMs), you will find yourself strangled by this “tail” issue. Since EM can’t know if the Host is Available, you will be able to edit or remove any UDM !!! The worst part is that I’m talking about Database UDMs and not Host UDMs, but still EM won’t let you alter any of them giving you back the following message:

“You cannot edit User Defined Metric MY_UDM_01 because host myserver is currently unavailable. Try again later when it becomes available.“

To take you out of your misery just go into SYSMAN schema and edit the MGMT_METRIC_THRESHOLDS table so you can alter the values of your warning and critical thresholds freely. But messing up directly with these tables should be avoided, so the best is trying to fix the tail issue first, but if everything else fails, go on and “hammer” those SYSMAN tables!

Requirements For Installing Oracle 10gR2 On RHEL/OEL 5 (x86)

Oracle shouldn’t certified EL5 for Oracle 10g. Period. So we don’t have to put up with Metalink notes like this one… please put things like they were before where we only needed to create Oracle user, adjust some Kernel parameters, and not having to check on 489371293483 RPM packages. God! Some people have a weird taste for scrambling things over…

Requirements For Installing Oracle 10gR2 On RHEL/OEL 5 (x86)
	Doc ID:	419646.1	Type:	HOWTO
	Modified Date:	01-MAR-2009	Status:	PUBLISHED

In this Document
Goal
Solution
References

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Applies to:

Oracle Server Enterprise Edition – Version: 10.2.0.1 to 10.2.0.1
Linux x86
Oracle Server – Enterprise Edition – Version: 10.2.0.1 to 10.2.0.1
Intel Based Server LINUX

Goal

This document describes the installation of Oracle 10gR2 database on RedHat Enterprise Linux/Oracle Enterprise Linux 5 (x86).

NOTE: RAC customers are strongly advised to review Note 414163.1 too

Solution

Installation requirements:

1. Hardware Requirements

i) Physical Memory

At least 1024MB of physical RAM is required. To determine the physical RAM size, enter the following command

# grep MemTotal /proc/meminfo

ii) Swap Space

The following table describes the relationship between installed RAM and the configured swap space requirement.

RAM	Swap Space
Between 1024 MB and 2048 MB	1.5 times the size of RAM
Between 2049 MB and 8192 MB	Equal to the size of RAM
More than 8192 MB	0.75 times the size of RAM

To determine the size of the configured swap space, enter the following command

# grep SwapTotal /proc/meminfo

iii) Disk space Requirement

• 400 MB of disk space in the /tmp directory
• Between 1.5 GB and 3.5 GB of disk space for the Oracle software, depending on the installation type
• 1.2 GB of disk space for a preconfigured database that uses file system storage (optional)

To determine the amount of free disk space on the system, enter the following command

# df -h

2. Kernel Requirements

a) Version

The system must be running the following kernel version (or a later version)

2.6.18-8

To determine whether the required kernel is installed, enter the following command:

# uname -r

b) SELinux

Due to an internal bugs of Oracle database (Bug 6140224, Bug 6079461), SELinux has to be disabled on RHEL/OEL 5 to work with Oracle database 10.2. Please refer Note 454196.1 for more information about these bugs.
To check whether SELinux is Enabled or Disabled in a system, please refer Note 432988.1
To disable SELinux, please refer Note 457458.1

3. Installing required packages

The following packages are required to be installed to have a supported to installation. It is recommended to choose a “default list of RPMs” during installation as per Note 376183.1 ‘Defining a “default RPMs” installation of the RHEL OS’. Please note following points while installing these packages

a) The version numbers for these packages given below are the minimum version required. If you have the packages with higher versions than the versions mentioned below, you can install the higher version packages.

b) Some of the below packages might be already part of “Default RPMs installation”, and some of the packages might be already part of “base” installation of OS.

c) Some of the below packages may require other packages as dependencies. So, make sure that you have installed these packages including the dependency packages required.

binutils-2.17.50.0.6-2.el5
compat-libstdc++-33-3.2.3-61
elfutils-libelf-0.125-3.el5
elfutils-libelf-devel-0.125
gcc-4.1.1-52
gcc-c++-4.1.1-52
glibc-2.5-12
glibc-common-2.5-12
glibc-devel-2.5-12
glibc-headers-2.5-12
libaio-0.3.106
libaio-devel-0.3.106
libgcc-4.1.1-52
libstdc++-4.1.1
libstdc++-devel-4.1.1-52.e15
make-3.81-1.1
sysstat-7.0.0
unixODBC-2.2.11
unixODBC-devel-2.2.11

Note:

As per documentation Bug 7680459, the package libXp-1.0.0-8 is also required to invoke OUI successfully.

4. Set the kernel parameters

Add the following the lines in the file /etc/sysctl.conf

kernel.shmmni = 4096 
kernel.sem = 250 32000 100 128 
net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 9000 65500 
net.core.rmem_default = 1048576 
net.core.rmem_max = 1048576 
net.core.wmem_default = 262144 
net.core.wmem_max = 262144

To place these changes into effect, execute the command

# sysctl -p

5. Create Oracle user and groups

# groupadd oinstall 
# groupadd dba 
# useradd -g oinstall -G dba oracle 

# passwd oracle

6. Create the required directories for Oracle Base and change the ownership

For example 
# mkdir -p /u01/app/oracle 
# chown -R oracle:oinstall /u01/app/oracle

7. Set the session limits for Oracle user

Add the following lines to the /etc/security/limits.conf file

oracle soft nproc 2047 
oracle hard nproc 16384 
oracle soft nofile 1024 

oracle hard nofile 65536

Add the following line in the /etc/pam.d/login file

session required pam_limits.so

Add the following lines to the /etc/profile.

if [ $USER = "oracle" ]; then 
	ulimit -u 16384 
	ulimit -n 65536 
fi

8. Configure the Oracle user’s environment

Configuring the oracle User’s Environment, using the appropriate section of ”Oracle® Database Quick Installation Guide 10g Release 2 (10.2) for Linux x86″. Note that setting $ORACLE_BASE (not $ORACLE_HOME) in the environment will ease a couple of entries in the Oracle Universal Installer.

For example, if oracle user is using bash shell, and has the home directory as /home/oracle,
The following lines to be added to /home/oracle/.bash_profile
export ORACLE_BASE=/u01/app/oracle
export ORACLE_SID=orcl
unset ORACLE_HOME

9. Invoking OUI

Log in as Oracle user and start installation by any one of the following methods. This is required because Oracle 10.2 expects the OS to be RHEL 3 or RHEL/OEL 4.

Method 1:

$ ./runInstaller -ignoreSysPrereqs

Method 2:

Follow Note 456634.1

10. Warning at “Product-Specific Prerequisite Checks” screen

During the installation at the screen “Product-Specific Prerequisite Checks”, OUI gives a warning that Oracle database 10g is not certified on the current operating system. If we still proceed to continue, OUI gives a dialog-box with a warning
“Some recommended prerequisite checks have failed. You might get errors during installation. Do you want to proceed?”
This warning can be ignored, if all the above requirements are satisfied.

Change History:

Jan 19, 2009: Updated kernel parameter net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range as per correction request given by Oracle development team.

Feb 11, 2009: Updated with SELinux information.

Feb 27, 2009: Removed kernel parameter fs.file-max = 65536 , because the default value 101365 is more than 65536.

Mar 2, 2009: Removed kernel parameters net.ipv4.tcp_wmem and net.ipv4.tcp_rmem as they are not required. (Reference: unpublished Bugs 7647281 and 7647303)

When in Linux 64-bit RHEL 5 with Oracle 10.2 do this…

Exception java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: ../jre/1.4.2/lib/i386/libawt.so: libXp.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory occurred” on RHEL5/OEL5 for 10.2 x86 or x86_64 install
	Doc ID:	443617.1	Type:	PROBLEM
	Modified Date:	16-DEC-2008	Status:	PUBLISHED

In this Document
Symptoms
Cause
Solution
References

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Applies to:

Oracle Server – Enterprise Edition – Version: 10.2.0.1.0 to 10.2.0.1.0
Oracle Server – Standard Edition – Version: 10.2.0.1.0 to 10.2.0.1.0
Linux x86-64
Linux x86
This article applies to Red Hat Enterprise Linux RHEL 5 ( x86 and x86_64)
This article applies to Oracle Enterprise Linux OEL 5 (x86 and x86_64)

Symptoms

While installing Oracle database 10.2.0 on RHEL 5 (Redhat Enterprise Linux) or  OEL 5 (Oracle Enterprise Linux), you get the following error before Oracle Universal Installer (OUI) gets invoked.

Exception java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: /tmp/OraInstall<time_stamp>/jre/1.4.2/lib/i386/libawt.so: libXp.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory occurred..
java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: /tmp/OraInstall<time_stamp>/jre/1.4.2/lib/i386/libawt.so: libXp.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
at java.lang.ClassLoader$NativeLibrary.load(Native Method)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadLibrary0(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadLibrary(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.Runtime.loadLibrary0(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.System.loadLibrary(Unknown Source)
at sun.security.action.LoadLibraryAction.run(Unknown Source)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at sun.awt.NativeLibLoader.loadLibraries(Unknown Source)
at sun.awt.DebugHelper.<clinit>(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.Component.<clinit>(Unknown Source)
at oracle.sysman.oii.oiif.oiifm.OiifmGraphicInterfaceManager.<init>(OiifmGraphicInterfaceManager.java:222)
at oracle.sysman.oii.oiic.OiicSessionInterfaceManager.createInterfaceManager(OiicSessionInterfaceManager.java:193)
at oracle.sysman.oii.oiic.OiicSessionInterfaceManager.getInterfaceManager(OiicSessionInterfaceManager.java:202)
at oracle.sysman.oii.oiic.OiicInstaller.getInterfaceManager(OiicInstaller.java:436)
at oracle.sysman.oii.oiic.OiicInstaller.runInstaller(OiicInstaller.java:926)
at oracle.sysman.oii.oiic.OiicInstaller.main(OiicInstaller.java:866)
Exception in thread “main” java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError
at oracle.sysman.oii.oiif.oiifm.OiifmGraphicInterfaceManager.<init>(OiifmGraphicInterfaceManager.java:222)
at oracle.sysman.oii.oiic.OiicSessionInterfaceManager.createInterfaceManager(OiicSessionInterfaceManager.java:193)
at oracle.sysman.oii.oiic.OiicSessionInterfaceManager.getInterfaceManager(OiicSessionInterfaceManager.java:202)
at oracle.sysman.oii.oiif.oiifm.OiifmAlert.<clinit>(OiifmAlert.java:151)
at oracle.sysman.oii.oiic.OiicInstaller.runInstaller(OiicInstaller.java:984)
at oracle.sysman.oii.oiic.OiicInstaller.main(OiicInstaller.java:866)

Cause

The  i386 version of the libXp package is missing. The Oracle Universal Installer ( OUI  ) requires the file libXp.so.6 and this file is installed with the package libXp in RHEL 5 and OEL 5.

Issue the following to confirm the missing rpm:

% rpm -qa –queryformat “%{NAME}-%{VERSION}-%{RELEASE} (%{ARCH})\n” | grep libXp

Solution

The package libXp was not installed in RHEL 5/OEL 5 with default RPM packages, so it will need to be installed manually.   In RHEL 4 this file was provided by the package xorg-x11-deprecated-libs which is installed with default package installation but this is not the case for RHEL5/OEL5 and is now provided with a different rpm, the libXp rpm.

Install the package libXp by the command:

# rpm -ivh </path/to/>libXp.<version>.i386.rpm

References

Note 419646.1 – Requirements For Installing Oracle 10gR2 On RHEL/OEL 5 (x86)
Note 421308.1 – Requirements For Installing Oracle10gR2 On RHEL/OEL 5 (x86_64)

Install Oracle iAS Release 2 on RHEL5

This is a pain to do because Oracle 10g release 1 is the database that comes with Oracle iAS release 2 and it is not supported by RHEL5. So the extra steps you need to take to put it all in the same box turns this installation into a series of unnecessary steps if you had got RHEL4 in the first place.

The sequence presented here is tested and it works you just need to be sure first that RHEL is ready for Oracle 10g. Here are some pre-requisites for 10g on RHEL5:

P1 – Take you server name out of that first line on /etc/hosts
P2 – Make sure you’re on 32 or 64-bit by typing “uname -a”:. x86=32bits;  X64=64bits
P3 – Disable Secure Linux (SELinux=Disabled @ /etc/selinux/config)
P4 – The RPM list is quite long but make sure you have:

• xorg-x11-libs-compat-6.8.2-1
• openmotif21-2.1.30-11
• libXp-1
• openmotif-2
• compat-db-4

Don’t stress if you haven’t got “pdksh.5.2.14-30″, or “sysstat-5.0.5-1″ or even “gnome-libs-1″: you won’t need them! Actually the list is quite exausting and if you want you can follow note 329361.1 but only for pre-requisite check! Because the rest of the note concerning installation order is quite confusing.

Now the right order tested and running:

1. Install 10.2.0.1 database CD on one Oracle Home
2. Install 10.2.0.1 companion CD (make sure it installs ultra-search) on the same Oracle Home
3. Install patch 10.2.0.4 on this Oracle Home
4. Created a new DB called “infra” with database blocksize of 8k, “aq_tm_processes=10″ and “sessions=500″ (very important!) using Custom option at DBCA in order to include the Ultra-Search option. In the end unlock all accounts beggining with “WK”.
5. Resize the SYSTEM and UNDO tablespaces for 1GB
6. Install MRCA (latest version) 10.1.0.3 on a second Oracle Home, choosing as destination for the tablespaces the same directory where “infra” database was created. This Oracle Home will be useless in the future, its only to lauch the MRCA utility in order to create the Metadata Repository in the database created on step 4.
7. Install and “Identity Management”-only type installation of Oracle iAS release 2 on a third Oracle Home (infrastructure installation)
8. Finally on a fourth Oracle Home, a Middle Tier installation of Oracle iAS release 2.

After this you have Oracle iAS release 2 patchset 2 successfully installed. But now you have to patch it to 10.1.0.2.3:

1. Patch de middle tier installation (4th Oracle Home)
2. Stop middle tier
3. Patch the Infrastructure Installation (third Oracle Home)
4. Run the Patch in Metadata Repository update mode and choose the “BI Forms” installation type and the update process updated the repository for the following products: “Portal” and “Wireless”.

And you’re done.

PS: Now tell me why Oracle hasn’t bought BEA before with this crapy Application Server.

The unwritten rule of Clusterware User Equivalence step in a RAC installation

These post titles just keep getting better!

Well the message on this one is pretty simple: after configuring user-equivalence (as a pre-requisite for Oracle Clusterware installation) you should test it not just with the public name, but with all names that are at the hosts file, except for the vip ones.

And you should do it at each and every node of your RAC network.

At a site with the following configuration:

[root@node1 ~]# cat /etc/hosts
# Do not remove the following line, or various programs
# that require network functionality will fail.
127.0.0.1       localhost.localdomain   localhost
192.168.10.100  node1.oracle.com        node1
192.168.10.101  node1-priv.oracle.com   node1-priv
192.168.10.102  node2.oracle.com        node2
192.168.10.103  node2-priv.oracle.com   node2-priv

You should test user equivalence with all those 8 names! … at each node!

First nodes first:

[oracle@node1 ~]# ssh node1 date
Qui Fev 26 23:44:30 WET 2009
[oracle@node1 ~]# ssh node1.oracle.com date
Qui Fev 26 23:44:31 WET 2009
[oracle@node1 ~]# ssh node2 date
Qui Fev 26 23:44:34 WET 2009
[oracle@node1 ~]# ssh node2.oracle.com date
Qui Fev 26 23:44:40 WET 2009
[oracle@node1 ~]# ssh node1-priv date
Qui Fev 26 23:45:30 WET 2009
[oracle@node1 ~]# ssh node1-priv.oracle.com date
Qui Fev 26 23:45:31 WET 2009
[oracle@node1 ~]# ssh node2-priv date
Qui Fev 26 23:45:34 WET 2009
[oracle@node1 ~]# ssh node2-priv.oracle.com date
Qui Fev 26 23:45:40 WET 2009

And now for something completely different (same stuff but at node2):

[oracle@node2 ~]# ssh node1 date
Qui Fev 26 23:46:30 WET 2009
[oracle@node2 ~]# ssh node1.oracle.com date
Qui Fev 26 23:46:31 WET 2009
[oracle@node2 ~]# ssh node2 date
Qui Fev 26 23:46:34 WET 2009
[oracle@node2 ~]# ssh node2.oracle.com date
Qui Fev 26 23:46:40 WET 2009
[oracle@node2 ~]# ssh node1-priv date
Qui Fev 26 23:47:30 WET 2009
[oracle@node2 ~]# ssh node1-priv.oracle.com date
Qui Fev 26 23:47:31 WET 2009
[oracle@node2 ~]# ssh node2-priv date
Qui Fev 26 23:47:34 WET 2009
[oracle@node2 ~]# ssh node2-priv.oracle.com date
Qui Fev 26 23:47:40 WET 2009

ASMlib and Kernel version

Last time I had to install a ASMlib RPMs on my RHEL 4.4 box I found out that my Kernel version was:. 2.6.9-42.0.0.0-1. What on earth do those geeks are thinking to pull up such a version number?

I went to oracle.com’s page for ASMlib and found out that for RHEL 4 there were something like 400 different RPMs.

The information company is Oracle Corporation and their site sucks! How am I suposed to find the right RPM? Couldn’t those nerds made up some simple servlet that I would type my kernel version and a ZIP file would pop up for download? No, it’s too complicated for Oracle that once acused Informix of hiring lawyers instead of programmers. So now I think that Oracle should hire some programmers for their site instead of having fired everyone at Oracle local support.

So the hard time Oracle gave me at their stupid site grew on me the need to find something and since my version was 269-42 when I found it I was thrilled. I took the oracleasm-269-42 RPM along with the oracleasmlib and oracleasm-support one.

But when I’ve tryied to install it I got an error on “/etc/init.d/oracleasm configure” I’ve started a journey no one should want at a Linux box: Not knowing what went wrong, since I was darn sure I had the right stuff.

You know what? I learned the hard way geeks and nerds make stuff for geeks and nerds, and so those 3 zeros after the version number, that had absolutely no meaning for me, turned out to be the key.

So the RHEL install CD #3 had all the RPMs I needed for that stupid version: oracleasm-2.6.9-42.0.0.0-1 ! I had to do was get oracleasmlib RPM from the site and use the kernel and support one from the CD #3 and everything went like a charm.

Ignore prerequisites check in Oracle Universal Installer

If you’re 100% sure that your system fits all the operating system prerequisites prior to start an Oracle installation but the Oracle Universal Installer (OUI) keeps bugging you (attention that OUI prerequisite check is a “friend”!) and you want to move on with you installation just call the runinstaller without that check (in Linux) just type in (as “oracle” user):

./runinstaller -ignoreSysPrereqs

A situation where you might want to do this is when you want to trick a Oracle 10g installer to believe that your Linux 5 is actually from version 4 (and you even twicked the release file for instance: /etc/redhat-release) but the installer keeps bugging you – a common situation where this happens its when you install a patchset.

ASM Discovery String in Linux

Having trouble finding the ASM disks that you have previously added but neither DBCA nor the ASM disk finder can’t dough them out of wherever they are? And do you use Linux?

If you are using ASMlib disks properly and previously added just use as a Discovery String for your new Disk Group the following string:

/dev/oracleasm/disks/*

Just like that: no quoting. If this doesn’t find your disks probably you haven’t added the disks correctly. Search for another post in this site about how to add a ASMlib disk in Linux.